


Breaking Point

by stellarmeadow



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Coda, Episode: s03e15 Coda, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:40:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23851717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellarmeadow/pseuds/stellarmeadow
Summary: Eddie yawned as he closed his locker. A lifestyle containing regular 24 hour shifts should make it easier to handle a lack of sleep. But when the time spent actually sleeping is plagued by a hellish landscape of nightmares, even simple everyday actions, like changing into a uniform, seem draining.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Evan “Buck” Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Comments: 25
Kudos: 296





	Breaking Point

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully you're not sick of codas from 3.15 by now! I'm looking forward to finally getting to read some of them now that I've written this. 
> 
> Thanks to tarialdarion and smudgegirl for being such great cheerleaders and being able to point out to me when I'm wrong. :)

Eddie yawned as he closed his locker. A lifestyle containing regular 24 hour shifts should make it easier to handle a lack of sleep. But when the time spent actually sleeping is plagued by a hellish landscape of nightmares, even simple everyday actions, like changing into a uniform, seem draining.

Eddie climbed the steps and made a bee line for the coffee pot, filling the largest mug he could find. After a long drink, he headed for the couch, where Buck was watching something on his phone.

Eddie sat down next to Buck, leaning into Buck to see what was on the phone, only to see himself and Christopher. 

“Where’d you get that?” Eddie asked.

Buck gave him a bright smile. “Carla. Since I had to work she recorded it for me.” 

Eddie leaned his chin on Buck’s shoulder to watch Christopher give his report. At the time, Eddie had been so busy saying all the words along in his head that he hadn’t had the chance to appreciate how cute he was. 

As much as he enjoyed watching his son, Eddie also enjoyed Buck’s even breaths, the slight, steady rise and fall of his shoulder, the combination of which made Eddie’s eyes heavy, until they closed, the sound of Buck’s breathing and the tinny sound of Chris’s report the only thing in Eddie’s conscious mind, until even that faded. 

“Eddie?” 

Eddie blinked his eyes open, moving away from Buck just enough to see his eyes. “Sorry, what?”

Buck studied him. “Why don’t you take a break and get some shut eye?”

As enticing as that sounded, he gave himself twenty minutes of sleep before the nightmares hit, which was the last thing he needed the entire firehouse to know about. “I’m fine,” Eddie said, sinking back into the couch and taking a long drink of coffee. “Just need to get caffeinated.” 

Buck’s eyes stayed on Eddie’s face for a long moment. “Okay,” he said finally. “Here, check out this video I found this morning.”

Eddie rested his chin on Buck’s shoulder again to see the video, taking great care to stay awake this time.

***

Buck didn’t stop watching. 

He didn’t say much more about it, but he watched until Eddie felt almost guilty for not confessing. Under normal circumstances, he probably would have had a late night of too many beers where he’d told Buck the truth about the nightmares. 

Except he’d heard how Buck had reacted to the cave in. Heard in great detail, in fact, from both Chim and Hen, and even a somewhat sanitized version of it from Bobby. In particular, Hen’s “Buck lost his shit, big time,” stuck in Eddie’s brain.

Which made Eddie feel like a giant asshole for even thinking about laying all the nightmares on Buck’s shoulders, too, since he’d already lived his own version of hell that night. 

Just because Eddie was reliving it didn’t mean Buck had to as well.

Halfway through a shift, Eddie went into the bathroom to splash water on his face, ignoring the flashbacks to how many time he’d actually drowned in his nightmares over the past two weeks. He leaned on the sink and took a good look in the mirror. The area under his eyes was so bruised from lack of sleep he looked like he had a week-old broken nose, and his eyes were so bloodshot he looked like he’d just come out of an eight-hour firefight. 

Shit, no wonder Buck was watching. 

“Hey,” Buck said, walking into the bathroom as if on cue. “You okay?”

Eddie nodded, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “I’m fine.”

Buck snorted softly, but not so softly that Eddie couldn’t hear him. “Look, Eddie….”

Eddie took a deep breath and steeled himself before meeting Buck’s eyes. “Yeah?”

Buck licked his lips and swallowed before he said, too gently, “You know I’m here when you’re ready to talk, right?”

The way Buck said it, as if Eddie were something delicate to be handled with care, had tears stinging Eddie’s eyes. The words, the _idea_ of them, felt like some kind of challenge Eddie wasn’t prepared to meet. But then, Eddie had never been good at asking for help.

Well, he’d never been good at _accepting_ help—he was absolute _shit_ at asking for it.

“If there’s ever anything to talk about,” Eddie said, aiming for breezy and missing by maybe half a mile, “I know that. Thanks.”

The expression on Buck’s face as he nodded and turned away was one Eddie could only describe as disappointed. Great. Wonderful. Maybe disappointed Buck would turn up in his nightmares instead tonight. 

At least it would be a change of scenery.

***

Eddie rushed into the fire house, happy to see that things were calm and the team wasn’t running out the door for a call. He was only five minutes late, but five minutes would have kept him from going out there with his team. 

Buck and Bobby were talking just outside the locker room when Eddie approached. “Sorry, Cap,” Eddie said. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Bobby said, laying his hand on Eddie’s shoulder for a brief moment before heading for the stairs. Eddie didn’t miss the look Bobby gave Buck as he walked away, though, like Eddie was something that Buck needed to handle. 

“Chris oversleep?” Buck asked. 

Eddie shrugged—even if Buck was offering up the excuse, Eddie couldn’t stand to lie to him. It was bad enough to let Buck say it within Bobby’s hearing to put the idea out there. 

“Hey,” Buck said, following Eddie into the locker room, even though Buck was already in his uniform, “wait until you hear what I saw on YouTube last night. Did you know that people in the Middle Ages used to party in cemeteries?”

As Eddie changed, Buck continued his story about facts from the Middle Ages, never once asking Eddie about being late, or about how clearly exhausted he was. Eddie had a mirror—he knew exactly how he looked.

But Buck just kept talking. And Eddie clung to every word like a life raft.

***

It wasn’t until almost lunchtime that Eddie remembered the news crew. Or, more accurately, that Bobby said “The news crew will be here in fifteen minutes.” Eddie had managed to block out the whole event—one of his better coping mechanisms, if he was honest. 

Eddie went to the bathroom and took a minute to breathe. He could do this. The rest of his team didn’t need to see anything other than what he wanted them to see. All he had to do was focus on every second instead of the overwhelming whole. 

Head on straight, he went back out to see the crew setting up. They’d be broadcasting live during the noon news, so they were setting up a monitor to see everything going on with the broadcast leading up to the live report.

Buck was just on the other side of the news crew, leaning down with a wide smile. As Eddie got nearer, he saw why—Buck was talking to Hayden, who looked none the worse for wear despite being stuck in a dark hole for hours just two weeks before. 

Eddie hoped maybe the kid was being spared nightmares, though given Christopher’s recovery from the tsunami, it was unlikely. 

At least kids seemed to rebound from the nightmares a lot more quickly than adults.

Eddie had barely reached the group when Hayden’s mother wrapped him in a tight hug. “Thank you,” she said in a fierce whisper. “Thank you so much for my son.”

He opened his mouth to give his usual, ‘Just doing my job,’ but instead he said, “I wasn’t going to leave there without him.”

She pulled back, giving him a wet smile. “I know. I could see that when you were talking to him on the radio. Thank you.” 

Eddie felt a tug on his shirt and looked down to see Hayden. “Hey there,” Eddie said, kneeling down so he was eye to eye with the boy. “You look a lot better than the last time I saw you.”

Hayden nodded. “Mom put this stuff in my hair to make me…presentable?”

Eddie laughed. “Well it looks good. How are you doing?”

His shrug answered more truthfully than the words, “Okay, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, softly. “Me, too.”

Without warning, Hayden launched himself at Eddie, arms locking tightly around Eddie’s head. “Thank you for coming to get me,” he said.

“Thank you for holding on until I could get there,” Eddie said, arms around Hayden’s back. 

Eddie looked up at Buck, who was watching the scene with a look Eddie couldn’t define. 

“Okay,” said someone from the TV crew, “we’re about ready to go live.”

They positioned Eddie with the Benson family in the center of the shot, the rest of the 118 standing around or behind them. Eddie watched a cat litter commercial on the monitor come to an end, replaced by the news anchors. He couldn’t hear their words, but a moment later, he saw himself and the rest of the group on the monitors.

“That’s right, Erica, just two weeks ago, little Hayden Benson was playing with his sister and got stuck in an old well.” 

The monitor switched to footage from the night in question, scenes Eddie hadn’t seen, since he was underground at the time. He started when lightning struck the drill and everything came crashing down. The whole thing made him want to run, but he was on camera, he was representing his family and all of their brothers and sisters beyond.

He wouldn’t run.

A warm hand rested in the small of Eddie’s back, where it wouldn’t be seen by the camera. He didn’t need to look to know it was Buck. 

Eddie looked at the monitor again. He could spot Buck even in uniform in the background, digging at the ground like he could get to Eddie with his bare hands before someone—Bobby, he thought—pulled him away. 

He couldn’t see the look on Buck’s face, but he didn’t need to. He could read Buck’s body like an open book, and what he saw made him lean back into Buck’s hand, so damn grateful for the warm steadiness of it, something he really didn’t want to examine too closely.

He’d asked more than enough of Buck already.

***

_”Bobby, you have to let me go get them!” Eddie yelled._

_“You can’t go down there,” Bobby said._

_“It’s Chris and Buck!”_

_“I know, Eddie.” Bobby’s hand was on Eddie’s shoulder but there was no warmth to it. “That’s why you can’t go.”_

_Eddie tried to get past Bobby, but he was backed up by Hen and Chim. The three of him wouldn’t let Eddie go anywhere near the well._

_“You. Have. To. Let. Me. Go.”_

_“Eddie, you know if anyone will bring Chris back, it’s Buck,” Hen said._

_“It’s my job,” Eddie said. “Mine. I’m his father. Buck shouldn’t have to be down there. It should be me.”_

_The world exploded around him, leaving him unsure for a moment if he was in L.A. or back in Afghanistan. But the sparks faded, and no, it was definitely L.A._

_And the well was now buried under a lot of mud and a truck._

_“Christopher!” Eddie screamed. “Buck!”_

_“Eddie.” Bobby had him in a full hug on the ground, and Eddie didn’t even know how they’d gotten there. “Eddie, I’m sorry. We can’t…there’s nothing we can do.”_

Eddie woke up, tears streaming down his face. He took a deep, shuddering breath, focusing on the slight roughness of his sheets, the slight scent of the beach he always associated with L.A., even though his house was miles inland, and the familiar sounds of his home at night.

But it wasn’t enough to banish the nightmare.

He grabbed his phone as he rolled out of bed, already into the hall as he punched the phone icon in his texts with Buck. 

Chris was safe and sound in his bed, hopefully dreaming of wonderful, happy things. He was safe. Eddie could see him, clearly safe and not trapped underground. 

“Eddie?” 

Buck’s voice in Eddie’s ear reminded him of the phone there. And that he’d called Buck.

Shit.

“Oh, hey, did I wake you?” Eddie whispered, like any of it made sense. “Sorry, I didn't realize how late it had gotten." 

"It's 3:30 in the morning and you didn't realize how late it had gotten?"

_Come on, Buck. Play along._ "Yeah, sorry. I, uh…."

"What do you need, Eddie?" 

The words were soft, gentle, with so much…God, Eddie didn’t even have a word for what he heard in Buck’s voice. "Nothing, never mind. It can wait until tomorrow,” Eddie said. “Sorry I woke you. Go back to sleep."

He hung up the phone and slid down the wall to sit just opposite Chris’s door, where he could hear the slow, steady breathing that assured him Chris slept on, still safe.

And Buck was clearly safe at home. It had just been a nightmare. Eddie shouldn’t have called him—he’d known it was just a dream. He could have talked himself out of it without waking Buck up and worrying him.

If he was lucky, maybe Buck would pretend it never happened. 

Eddie wasn’t getting back to sleep anytime soon, though. So he sat there, listening to Christopher breathe on as Eddie replayed happy memories from the past couple years on a loop in his head until it got to be too much like the episode of ‘This is Your Life’ that had ultimately pushed Eddie to survive underground.

So he focused on the future, on the family he’d fought to get back to. He’d take Chris to the zoo this weekend. He and Buck were both off, so they could make a day of it. Maybe even go skateboarding again.

And Buck had promised he’d go with them to the new Disney movie, too. Maybe they could do that on Sunday. 

He was scheduling in his head when a key sounded in the door, the door opening a second later. Eddie didn’t have to look—only three people had a key to the house, and he didn’t think Abuela or Carla would be dropping by in the middle of the night. 

The door locked again, Buck’s footsteps creaking along the floor until his feet—bare, of course, because he didn’t want to wake Chris—stopped beside Eddie’s leg. 

“Hey,” Buck whispered, as he sat down against the wall, his thigh pressed against Eddie’s. “You wanna tell me what you’re doing here and not in bed?”

“No.”

Buck leaned in closer, his shoulder warm against Eddie’s. “Hey. Eddie. Look at me.”

After a moment, Eddie turned and met Buck’s eyes, just visible in the moonlight. Christ, Eddie wanted to just dive into that look and swim around until it washed off all the crap that never seemed to be far away inside his head. 

“I had a nightmare,” Eddie said slowly, eyes drifting back to Christopher’s door. “That’s all. Just a nightmare.”

“But it’s not all, is it?”

He should’ve known Buck wouldn’t be put off, not after he came all this way in the middle of the night. “After everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve been through, nightmares are a recurring feature of my life.”

“But,” Buck prompted when Eddie didn’t continue.

Eddie shook his head. “Sometimes they’re worse than others. And some of the content is worse than others.”

“So what happened tonight?”

Eddie didn’t want to relive it. More importantly, he didn’t want to lay it on Buck’s shoulders, too. “It was just a nightmare.”

“One that made you call me in the middle of the night, so I kind of think maybe you needed to talk about it.”

“No. I just needed….” He pushed a hand through his hair, arm rubbing against Buck’s as it moved. “I needed to know you were okay.” 

His hand dropped to his lap, only to be joined by Buck’s, who laced their fingers together. “You know,” Buck said, “You had good timing when you called.”

“Why’s that?” 

“Because you woke me up from the middle of my own nightmare.”

Eddie found Buck’s eyes again. He recognized that haunted look lurking in the background from his own face staring back at him in the mirror every morning lately. “The well?” Eddie asked.

Buck nodded. “When everything caved in…man, Eddie, it…I don’t even remember the next couple minutes.”

“I do,” Eddie said. “I saw it on the news footage today. Buck…I’m so sorry—”

“No, you don’t get to apologize for this, Eddie.” Buck’s grip tightened on Eddie’s, as his other hand came up to land carefully against Eddie’s cheek, as if he was afraid Eddie would look away again. “If the situation was reversed, I’d have done the same. It’s who we are, and it’s why we do what we do.”

Eddie swallowed. “I know. That’s part of what scares me.”

“About what? Our jobs?”

“No, about this.” 

He leaned in, Buck meeting him halfway, reading his mind as always. The first kiss was soft, the second more sure, before Eddie pulled away. “This…thing…it scares me, what might happen if….”

“Me, too,” Buck said, thumb moving idly over Eddie’s cheekbone. “But we’re the ones who run into the scary situations, remember? Not away from them.”

“Somehow I think running into a fire might be a little easier.”

Buck huffed a laugh. “Yeah, but the harder it is to run into something, the more rewarding it can be when you do.”

Eddie laid his head on Buck’s shoulder, rubbing it against the soft fabric of his shirt, as they sat there and listened to Christopher sleep.

\---  
END


End file.
